Apr 23, 2013; San Diego, CA, USA; General view of baseballs during batting practice prior to the San Diego Padres game against the Milwaukee Brewers at Petco Park. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

Dateline: June 25, 2005. The Mets are in Yankee Stadium, looking to lock up a rare Subway Series victory from their inter-city rivals. Hitting cleanup for the National League visitors is left fielder Cliff Floyd, now in his third season in the orange and blue.

Floyd had spent three stints with other teams in the National League East, breaking in with Montreal’s ill-fated 1994 squad before being traded to the Florida Marlins in time for their stunning 1997 World Series run. He was one of the rare stars who lasted through Florida’s first fire sale, only leaving the team in a 2002 trade that sent him back to the Expos. That stretch only lasted a couple weeks, as he was dealt again at the deadline to Boston. He left the Red Sox via free agency after the season and became a Met at age 30. Floyd had smashed 18 home runs each of his first two seasons for New York, but had already matched that total less than halfway into the 2005 campaign.

It didn’t take long for him to get to #19, as he belted a two-run homer in the top of the first inning off Yankee starter Sean Henn. The Amazin’ onslaught would continue in the next frame as David Wright, now in his first full season for the Mets, hit a solo shot to make it 3-0. The Yankees got two back off Tom Glavine in the bottom of the inning when a hot young rookie named Robinson Cano doubled home Jorge Posada and Jason Giambi.

The score would remain 3-2 until the top of the fifth, when Jose Reyes started the fireworks with an innocent bunt single. He promptly stole second base his 23^rd swipe of the season, and after Mike Cameron flew out, Carlos Beltran drove in Reyes with a double to left. That brought up Cliff Floyd, who continued to out-bomb the Bronx Bombers with another two-run shot, his 20^th of 2005. It was now 6-2 for the New Yorkers from the National League, but the fun was just beginning.

Reyes tacked on another run in the sixth on an RBI single off Scott Proctor. Then against Mike Stanton (whose actual name probably isn’t Giancarlo), Floyd started a rally with a walk. Mike Piazza singled to bring up Wright, who hit a double down the left field line to plate Floyd. Chris Woodward hit a sac fly to score Piazza, then after Brian Daubach grounded out, Raul Castro brought the final run home on an RBI double.

The Yanks would get one more run off a Cano solo home run in the 9^th, but it was far too little, far too late, as the Mets stunned the 55,114 in attendance with a 10-3 victory to clinch the rare series and mark an even rarer occurrence: the Mets and the Yankees had identical 37-37 records. And the star of this minor milestone win was Cliff Floyd and his 2-3, 3 R, 2 HR, 4 RBI afternoon.

That day at Yankee Stadium was a high point for Floyd in a career season in which he hit 34 home runs (a personal best) and drove in 98 runs (five shy of his 2001 mark with the Marlins). His power led the Mets to a 83-79 record, their first winning season in four years, and put them in prime position to challenge the Atlanta Braves’ division championship streak the next season.

Injuries limited Cliff to only half the season on the 2006 Mets team that, let’s face it, should have won the World Series that year. He became a free agent at the end of the season and did not come back to Queens. He played moderate-to-key roles on the NL Central-champion Chicago Cubs in 2007 and American League-champion Tampa Bay Rays in 2008. He only appeared in 10 games for the San Diego Padres in 2009, his last year in the bigs.

Cliff Floyd retired from baseball after a very respectable 17-year career, amassing a .278 batting average .840 OPS, 233 home runs, and 865 RBIs to go along with his 2001 All-Star Game appearance and 1997 World Series ring. After running into some financial trouble after his playing days ended, Floyd started a new job this season as an analyst on MLB Network.

June 25. A good day for Cal Ripken, Jr. in 1988 (played in his 1000^th consecutive game) and Andres Galarraga in 1995 (homers in three consecutive innings). Also a good day for West Berliners in 1948 (beginning of the Berlin airlift). A bad day for South Korea in 1950 (North Korea invades, beginning the still-technically-active Korean War) and Greek barbers in 1982 (Greece stops forcing military recruits to shave their heads upon enlistment). A great day for Cliff Floyd in 2005.

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July 21, 2012; Pittsburgh, PA, USA; United States post office chief operating officer Megan Brennan (left) and Margaret Stargell widow of Pittsburgh Pirates former first baseman Willie Stargell unveil a commemorative stamp honoring Willie Stargell before the game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Miami Marlins at PNC Park. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Willie Stargell played his entire 21-year career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, breaking into the majors during the 1962 September call-ups and lasting until the end of the 1982 campaign, retiring at the ripe old age of 42. Pops helped steer the Bucs to two World Series titles, one in 1971 with Roberto Clemente and one in 1979 at the helm of the “We Are Family” team. A seven-time All-Star, he shared the National League MVP with Keith Hernandez during the Family season and finished in the top three in voting for three straight years in the early 1970s, narrowly losing the ’73 crown to Pete Rose despite leading the league in home runs, doubles, RBIs, and the then-unknown OPS statistic.  Stargell was inducted into the Hall of Fame with 82.4 percent of the ballot in 1988, his first year of eligibility.

But whereas the rest of baseball looks at Stargell and sees a jovial man who loved the game and his teammates, the Flushing faithful see a smiling assassin. It should be thought of as no coincidence that Willie debuted during the same season the Mets were going 40-120: for the next two decades he would make every edition of the team, even the winners of ’69 and ’73, feel like an expansion squad. In 249 career appearances opposite New York, Stargell hit 60 home runs (roughly one-eighth of the 475 he belted in his career), drove in 182, slugged .576, and turned in a .942 OPS. In 1966 alone, he batted .420 with 10 homers and accumulated a 13-game OPS of 1.640. Simply put, when he was matched up against the Amazin’s, Willie Stargell was Amazin’.

Because of Pops’s volume of work against the Mets, we’re going to look at five dates in particular he personally delivered fans a simultaneous feeling of shock, awe, pain, and bitterness, but never disbelief.

April 17, 1964: Stargell was a thorn in the Mets’ side from the day they opened up Shea Stadium. He hit the first home run in stadium history, a second-inning solo shot off Jack Fisher, and scored the winning run off a Bill Mazeroski single in the top of the ninth, securing a 4-3 win for Bob Friend and the visitors (for Friend’s days of glory both for and against the Mets, follow this link).

September 20, 1970: With 12 games to go, the world champion Mets were looking to bridge a two-and-a-half game gap with the Pirates in the NL East. Tom Seaver was off his game, giving up five runs in just over five innings, but his team clawed its way back from a three-run deficit, scoring once in the sixth (a Ken Boswell home run) and twice in the seventh (RBI singles by Ron Swoboda and Bud Harrelson) to force extra innings. But Stargell took Tug McGraw deep to lead off the 10^th, sucking the life out of Shea Stadium in the process. The go-ahead shot opened up the floodgates for a four-run Pittsburgh inning as they sunk Gil Hodges and company 9-5. The Mets would never recover from the blow, going 4-5 the rest of the way and fading into third place, six games out. The Pirates used Stargell’s clutch hit as a springboard, winning seven of their last 10 and finishing five games ahead of the Cubs to win the NL East before being swept by Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine in the NLCS.

June 18, 2012; Flushing, NY, USA; New York Mets former pitcher Tom Seaver gestures in the dugout before the game against the Baltimore Orioles at Citi Field. Mandatory Credit: Debby Wong-USA TODAY Sports

July 28, 1972: Stargell again got the best of Seaver and McGraw on a day that saw Pittsburgh pad its lead over New York in an Eastern race that was getting less and less interesting with every game. Pops launched a solo home run off the Franchise in the fourth inning to make it 2-0. In the top of the seventh, he was on the finishing end of a rally-killing Ed Kranepool double play that would force the Mets to settle for one. In the bottom of the eighth, Stargell batted home an insurance run off McGraw to secure the complete-game victory for Dock Ellis, 3-1. The Pirates won their third straight NL East in convincing fashion, losing again to the Reds in the NLCS, while the Mets turned in their third straight bronze medal finish, 13.5 games out.

May 19, 1973: In the midst of his best statistical season, baseball’s “other” Willie looked to help jumpstart his slumping squad against his familiar foes, who now had their own Willie on roster. Willie Mays didn’t play in this game, but even at his advanced age (he turned 42 just 11 days before) he would have helped the Mets overcome their nemesis. Rusty Staub’s sixth-inning homer off Nelson Briles looked as if it would stand up for Jon Matlack, who tossed six scoreless innings before being relieved for Tug McGraw. But Bob Robertson’s blast to lead off the ninth forced extras, and after Stargell pounded a three-run moonshot in the top of the tenth to provide the final 4-1 margin, an intense feeling of déjà vu overcame Mets fans (and you, whose memory of September 20, 1970 is a little more fresh than theirs) who sensed another bitter finish behind the Bucs. Fortunately, that night proved to be the low point for New York in the season, as they rode a 13-5 record against Pittsburgh to the top of an ultracompetitive NL East, finishing two and a half games up on the Pirates in a race that saw the fifth-place Cubs land just five games back in the final standings. The Mets, of course, would win their second NL pennant in five seasons and narrowly lose the World Series to the Oakland A’s.

May 17, 1979: The two teams’ fortunes took drastically different turns over the next six years. The Pirates finished first or second for five straight seasons and were destined for greatness in 1979. The Mets, meanwhile, dropped into fifth place in 1974, and after recovering and taking bronze for the next two campaigns, the team finished in last place in 1977, their first cellar-dwelling in ten years, and again in 1978. Tom Seaver was long gone, as were most of the Mets who defined the team in the early part of the decade (even Ed Kranepool would retire by the end of ’79). While free agency had turned over the Pirates as well, Pops was still going strong, even at an age that gave new meaning to his nickname. In a game that embodied the spirit of what was old and what was new (and I’m not talking Massachusetts), New York overcame Stargell’s home run off Pete Falcone in the fourth to take a 5-4 lead into the bottom of the eighth. The visitors were in good shape after Jesse Orosco struck out the first two batters of the frame, but Orosco was in his third inning of relief and walked Bill Robinson to bring up…that man at first base. With one swing of the bat, Willie Stargell had his 60^th (and final) career home run against the New York Mets, and his Pittsburgh Pirates had a 6-5 victory, one of their many thrilling finishes of the 1979 season. The eventual World Series MVP and his Family dominated the National League that year, winning 98 games and coming back from a 3-1 series deficit to beat the Baltimore Orioles in the Fall Classic. Stargell’s longtime whipping boys finished as a mirror image, losing 99 games for a third straight last-place finish. The Mets would stay in the doldrums for four more seasons before Frank Cashen could build a winner.

Willie Stargell died on April 9, 2001, at the relatively young age of 61, but his memory in Pittsburgh (and New York for that matter) will not be forgotten, as on the very same day the Pirates dedicated a statue of him outside the brand-new PNC Park. Pops will long live in Mets folklore as the Harlem Globetrotter to their Washington General, always triumphing and making them look silly in the process. While his time on this earth was short, but one thing is certain: he’s hitting home runs off Tug McGraw in heaven as we speak, and once Tom Seaver joins them up there, Pops will do the same to him.

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Apr 1, 2013; New York, NY, USA; Mr. Met gives a thumbs-up during the seventh inning of a MLB opening day game between the New York Mets and the San Diego Padres at Citi Field. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Dateline: July 21, 1968. The Mets are in St. Louis for the second game of a doubleheader. New York lost a tough one to Bob Gibson in the afternoon, and hot rookie Jerry Koosman was looking to get his team back on track and keep up his first stellar full season in the bigs.

Koosman and Redbird starter Nelson Briles were engaged in a knock-down, drag-out duel all evening. The first three innings went by uneventfully, but the fourth frame produced scoring threats for both teams. Cleon Jones took a leadoff walk and Ed Kranepool singled to put Jones in scoring position. J.C. Martin popped out, but Ron Swoboda got hit by a pitch to load the bases. Jerry Buchek couldn’t come through, however, grounding into a 5-4-3 double play to end the threat. Ron Davis doubled off Koosman to lead off the bottom of the fourth, but Jerry buckled down to retire Julian Javier, Orlando Cepeda, and Mike Shannon all in a row.

In the top of the sixth Cleon Jones again got a rally going with a one-out single. Kranepool’s groundout advanced Jones to second, and J.C. Martin came through with a single to break the scoreless tie. New York squandered the opportunity to put more runs on the board, but the way their man was working on the mound, that solitary run may have been all he needed.

The Cardinals’ last real threat came in the seventh inning. After Koosman struck out Cepeda and Shannon for the first two outs, he allowed singles to Johnny Edwards and Bobby Tolan, threatening the shutout. But Jerry forced Dal Maxvill (what a great name) to line out to defensive replacement Tommie Agee in center to end the inning, and Koosman faced no real trouble for the rest of the game, finishing off the night with two more strikeouts of Cepeda and Shannon. Final score: Mets 1, Cardinals 0. Koosman’s final line on his 13^th win of the season: a complete-game, four-hit shutout with a lone walk and 12 strikeouts.

While the Year of the Pitcher may have inflated his stats to a certain degree, Koosman was nevertheless outstanding during the 1968 season. His ERA stayed below 2.00 for most of the season before a rough outing on September 24 knocked it up to 2.12. But a stellar complete game on the final Saturday of the year gave him a final ERA of 2.08 to go along with his 19 Ws. Along with the first of his two All-Star appearances, Jerry finished second in the voting for National League Rookie of the Year, losing by one vote to some Cincinnati catcher named Johnny Bench.

The Mets finished 1968 with 73 wins, the most in franchise history, and sported a cavalcade of potential future stars, including a budding rotation led by Koosman, Nolan Ryan, Jim McAndrew, and lest we forget, Terrific Tom Seaver. The next year’s team would, of course, honestly shock the world by becoming its champions.

Koosman spend his career in Flushing overshadowed by the man they called “The Franchise,” but the Mets’ #2 would outlast #1 by a season and a half. A year after Koosman finished second in the 1976 Cy Young voting, Seaver was traded to the Reds in the Midnight Massacre, leaving Jerry the ace of the staff. Unfortunately, it was around that time that Koosman’s age finally caught up with him, and he lost 20 games for the 98-loss New Yorkers. After winning only three more games in 1978, he was traded back home to the Minnesota Twins in an offseason deal that would eventually bring Jesse Orosco into the Mets organization. Koosman pitched seven more seasons between the Twins, White Sox, and Phillies before retiring after his 42-year-old season in 1985. He received only four votes in his sole Hall of Fame ballot in 1991, but that doesn’t diminish the 12 outstanding seasons he spent playing in front of the Shea Faithful.

July 21. A good day for Randy Johnson in 2008 (first pitcher to strike out 2,000 batters for two different teams) and the legend of the 1962 Mets in…well, 1962 (Marv Throneberry’s error dooms a third straight complete game from a New York starter). Also a good day for Jesse James and his gang in 1873 (pull off the first successful train robbery in the Old West). A bad day for the Union Army in 1861 (lose the First Battle of Bull Run) and Joe Torre in 1975 (hits into four straight double plays in a game for the Mets). A great day for Jerry Koosman in 1968.

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